Vote 2016

Breitbart

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump is surging in battleground states Iowa and Virginia in newly released polls, consistent with the national trend reported this week by Reuters-Ipsos and other major polling operations.

A handful of swing states—experts always mention at least five, and no more than eleven—will determine the winner of the presidential race, mainly concentrated in the Midwest, Mid-Atlantic, and Southwest.Polling numbers from two of those states seem to fit a larger trend over the past two weeks of improving chances for Donald Trump to defeat Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.

An Emerson poll in Iowa has Trump up five points over Clinton, 44-39, in a sample of 600 likely voters. This brought the RealClearPolitics average of recent polls in the Hawkeye State to a +1 advantage for Trump, for the first time since the candidates held their respective conventions in mid-July.

Emerson also polled in Virginia and found Clinton with only a one-point lead over Trump, in a sample of 800 likely voters. The resulting RealClearPolitics average of +7.7 for Clinton is a significant departure from recent polls showing her with a double-digit advantage in the Old Dominion, which she has enjoyed since picking Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine (who is also the state’s former governor) as her running mate.

The Iowa poll was conducted Aug. 31-Sept. 1 with a margin of error of 3.9 percent, and the Virginia poll was conducted Aug. 30-Sept. 1 with a margin of 3.4 percent. These were the first Emerson polls in those two battleground states in this election cycle.